A new study by the University of Warwick and University College London points out that women who get less than the recommended eight hours sleep a night are at higher risk of heart disease and heart-related problems than men with the same sleeping patterns. Researchers found that levels of inflammatory markers vary significantly with sleep duration in women, but not men.
The study was published July 1 in the American Journal Sleep, and stated that it found levels of Interleukin-6 (IL-6), a marker related to coronary heart disease, were significantly lower in women who reported sleeping eight hours as compared with seven.
The second marker, High-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP), is predictive of future cardiovascular morbidity. Levels of hs-CRP were significantly higher in women who reported sleeping five hours or less.
T.S. Wiley has long been talking about the issues of women and sleep after writing her first book, "Lights Out: Sleep Sugar and Survival." History tells us that the diseases of civilization all hit hard after the Industrial Revolution when electricity gave us inexpensive artificial light. When you add it all up, the national health catastrophe has been about seventy-five years in the making.
Could the loss of sleep be destroying the endocrine clock that controls weight gain? Could how much you sleep really control your appetite? This may shock you. Yes. The prescription for better health is sleep, and it's free.
Wiley tells us there is simply WAY too much light in our society today. People don't sleep enough anymore. The real truth is that the urgent need to sleep is also the cause of Type II diabetes and other diseases of aging.
The answer lies in the circadian rhythmicity and evolution. This rhythm is about a 24-hour cycle in the physiological processes of all living beings (animals, plants, fungi and cyanobacteria.). The term "circadian" was coined by Franz Halberg, and it means "around", and dies, "day", meaning literally "about a day." Chronobiology is the formal study of daily, weekly, seasonal and annual rhythms. Circadian rhythms are can be modulated by external cues such as the sun (dawn and dusk) and temperature.
It seems as if almost every woman who hits her 40's succumbs to the inability to stay asleep through the night. It happens in peri-menopause but the truth is, these women never really sleep well for the rest of their lives.
She also strongly recommends rhythmic, biomimetic bioidentical hormones, and you will start sleeping through the night.
you can try the reasonably priced chewable Melatonin tablets available at Trader Joes and let several of them melt in your mouth about an hour before bedtime. (Take one for every hour after dark before midnight, with seasonal light changes.) And then as a last resort, reset your internal sleeping clock. Take Tylenol PM for three days and take a walk outside barefoot at dawn and at dusk.
You need to make sure your bedroom is dark. That means lights out. No moonlight or lamp post lights through the window, and no computer, clock or television screens.
You should really try to sleep for a minimum of nine hours or more of uninterrupted sleep every night.
